I was recently at another inspection association's seminar. At a break I got to talking with one of that association's longest members and I mentioned that I can often take up to 300 photos when looking at a property. He laughed and said - "How long does that take?" I replied that I am often at a house for 5-7 hours. He made the typical claim of how long he had been in the field and that he is looking for the 'big ticket' items only and implied that any inspector worth a grain of salt could do that in under 3-1/2 hours.
SO why does SENWI take longer?
Well first of all, our clients are usually with us (something uncommon in the industry) during the inspection. This allows them to be better informed regarding the condition of the dwelling and does take on average a hour or two longer per inspection depending on their level of interest and questions. It allows the buyer to understand the defect because they have seen it with their own eyes.
Next, we are not looking for just the 'big ticket items'. Our reports present a majority of the conditions we find in the house that could be improved upon. Who are we, as inspectors, to decide up front what is important to you as a buyer? I have had many client choose not to buy a home not because of the dollar value of a problem, but because they were not willing to deal with a specific problem. That is and should be your prerogative as a buyer.
Lastly, I suspect that we, at SENWI, take a bit more time to look at things than inspectors who take less time on site. We open up most access panels, we will move a couch or chair to see behind, we will clear out a closet to get into an attic or crawlspace and we will look behind that picture to see what it may be hiding (where incidentally many electrical distribution panels are found). We almost always inspect a roof from its surface or multiple eaves-trough locations (many in the industry just look at it from grade with binoculars), we will crawl over a fence in order to get into an otherwise inaccessible point of the back yard. This all takes time and increases our ability to report on deficiencies which in turn reduces your liability as a buyer.
Could we inspect the roof from grade and get a good idea on the OVERALL condition and age? Yes, but what about all the smaller details that may not be a condition of the roof issue, but more where the roof meets other parts of the dwelling, locations that may be allowing water into the wall or roof cavities. These can only be examined from arm's length and I do not know anyone with arms long enough to reach a roof from the ground level.
So, yes we could perform our inspections without the buyer present, we could state that areas are not accessible because of storage or fences, we could look at roofs from grade, we could leave our cameras in our truck, we could fill out a pre-printed checklist on site (hard copy or software driven), … We would still meet the legal requirements of our contract and our certifying body's Standards of Inspection. But we do not want to, we want to provide a service that is better than that, one that we can be proud of, one that PROTECTS YOU - not us.
